About Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers, also known simply as the Manics, are a Welsh rock band formed in Blackwood, Caerphilly, in 1986. The band consists of Nicky Wire and cousins James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore . They form a key part of the 1990s Welsh Cool Cymru cultural movement.
Following the release of their debut single "Suicide Alley" in 1988, Manic Street Preachers became a quartet with the addition of Richey Edwards as co-lyricist and rhythm guitarist. The band's early albums were in a punk vein, eventually broadening to a greater alternative rock sound, whilst retaining a leftist political outlook. Their early combination of androgynous glam imagery and lyrics about "culture, alienation, boredom and despair" gained them a loyal following.
Manic Street Preachers' first charting single was "Motown Junk" in 1991, followed by their debut album, Generation Terrorists, in February 1992. The band's next two albums were Gold Against the Soul in 1993 and The Holy Bible in 1994, the latter being the last album with Edwards, who disappeared in February 1995 and was legally presumed dead in 2008. The band continued as a trio, and achieved commercial success with the albums Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours .
The Manics have headlined festivals including Glastonbury, T in the Park, V Festival and Reading, winning eleven NME Awards, eight Q Awards and four BRIT Awards. They were nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1996 and 1999, and have had one nomination for the MTV Europe Music Awards. The band has sold more than ten million albums worldwide. The Manics have two number-one singles in the UK charts: "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" and "The Masses Against the Classes" , as well as two number-one albums: This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours and The Ultra Vivid Lament . From 1991 to 2010, the band recorded 33 consecutive top 40 singles in the UK.
Manic Street Preachers formed in 1986 at Oakdale Comprehensive School, Blackwood, South Wales, which all the band members attended. Bradfield and the slightly older Moore are cousins and shared bunk beds in the Bradfield family home after Moore's parents divorced.
During the band's early years, Bradfield, alongside the classically trained Moore, primarily wrote the music while Wire focused on the lyrics. The origin of the band's name remains unclear, but the most often-told story relates that Bradfield while busking one day in Cardiff, got into an altercation with someone who asked him "What are you, boyo, some kind of manic street preacher?"
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